by Jane Thynne
The reception hall of the Reich Chancellery was done out in contrasting coloured marble like an ugly cathedral. The walls were black slabs splintered with quartz, interset with veined, bloody red Saalburger stone, with yet more marble underfoot. As she followed an SS orderly dressed in the short white jacket that all Hitler’s domestic staff wore, Clara was overwhelmingly conscious of the gun against her thigh. She had guessed that no one on Hitler’s guest list would be subjected to the indignity of a body search, yet she was intensely aware that she must not slip on the highly polished surface and send the gun skittering beneath her. Even in her sturdy T-bars, the floor beneath her was as treacherous as a skating rink, deliberately waxed to a dazzling shine. It was a private joke for Hitler, who refused all requests to lay a carpet because diplomats needed practice moving on a slippery surface.
At the far end of the hall a door was flanked by two of the Leibstandarte, Hitler’s personal bodyguards. Selected for their above-average height and unquestioned fidelity to the Führer, they formed an invincible barricade against his enemies, but at Clara’s approach they moved simultaneously sideways, opening the doors as though to Aladdin’s cave to reveal a dazzle of sound and light.
The party was already in full swing and studded with VIPs, most of them stars of stage and screen. Leni Riefenstahl and Heinz Rühmann were talking to Gustaf Gründgens, another favourite actor of the regime. The actress Jenny Jugo, in magnolia satin, was air-kissing Zarah Leander. The good-looking celebrities were a festive sprinkling to leaven the dark mass of politicians. Rudolf Hess and his wife. The Goebbels and the Speers. Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach and Reich Labour Minister Robert Ley. Everyone was there. The entire upper echelon of the Third Reich was assembled to watch Mickey Mouse.
To Clara’s relief, Hitler had not arrived. She was desperate not to meet him. She had heard of the effect he had: Führer Kontakt, it was called, an intense magnetic hold that made the person with him believe, just for that moment, that they were the only one in the room. A hypnotic force that dazzled, empowered and enslaved.
Instead, one of the first faces she saw was Conrad Adler. He was standing in the corner nearest the door, inclining his head close to Henriette von Schirach, the Youth Leader’s pretty blonde wife. Her face was tipped adoringly upwards towards him, and she was smiling merrily. Although he barely turned his head, Clara knew Adler had seen her and she registered a spark of alarm in his eyes. She sensed that he was about to break off and approach her until something deterred him, and turning she saw Joseph Goebbels looming behind her.
‘Fräulein Vine. What a surprise. And may I say what a charming choice of brooch. For a charming woman.’
He reached out to brush the spot where it was pinned, letting his fingers trail her breast, and then, for the first time in their acquaintance, he moved to kiss her. As his hand travelled round her waist and downwards, Clara’s flesh turned to ice. If he strayed any further, he could not miss the stocking gun attached to her left thigh. Her entire body was rigid with alarm, yet even as she froze, she realized her reaction would arouse no suspicion at all. Goebbels must be well used to women flinching at his touch. Barely suppressed distaste was the natural response to the Propaganda Minister. How else should any woman react to a man who had persecuted so many and sent thousands to their deaths? Whose bigotry had goaded an entire nation into a spiral of coruscating hatred?
‘I’ve not seen you here before. Remind me who invited you?’
‘Leni Riefenstahl,’ said Clara, stepping backward and looking hastily around. ‘She thought I might enjoy it so she put my name on the guest list.’
‘She’s like that. She likes to take liberties with other people’s invitations. Still. It’s always a pleasure. The last time I was here was with your English friend, Unity Mitford. We watched Cavalcade.’
‘She mentioned that.’ According to Unity, Hitler had declared Noël Coward’s film about three generations of an upper-class British family his favourite movie.
‘I thought it very poor,’ said Goebbels.
‘It won Best Picture, didn’t it?’
A snort. ‘Perhaps in one sense that film is what Britain does best. An extended wallow in a rose-tinted version of her past. We in Germany prefer to focus on our future. But then . . .’
He broke off mid-sentence and Clara became aware of an intense, hostile glare. She looked round to see Magda Goebbels approaching, causing her husband to move swiftly in the opposite direction, like one in a pair of repelling magnets. Magda was dressed in high-necked, monkish black and wore the tragic expression of someone invited to her own funeral.
‘Don’t let me interrupt. I can see you and my husband were deep in conversation.’
‘Not really. We were discussing films.’
‘That’s what he always calls it. Discussing films. You take me for a fool, Fräulein Vine. Especially considering the way you’re sporting his brooch.’
Clara cursed herself for choosing Goebbels’ swastika. She had thought of it as a useful accessory, part of her disguise, and instead it had parachuted her into unforeseen difficulties.
‘I have one exactly like it. But then, so do half the women in Berlin. He has his jeweller make them. Some men – Goering for example – take a real interest in jewellery, but my husband lacks that imagination. He orders precisely the same trinket every time. Usually when he wants to reward an actress for “discussing films”.’
What misfortune to encounter a paranoid Magda Goebbels on a night like this. Clara was just summoning conciliatory words when the Minister’s wife lifted a glass from a passing tray and shrugged.
‘Don’t bother to deny it. I don’t care anyway. I just want this evening to be over. Let’s hope the Führer’s tired.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because when he’s not he watches two films, back to back. I’ve been here so many times and it’s always the same routine. Cartoon first, then a newsreel, then the movie. Or two. Then he stays up talking until four in the morning and it’s always the same subjects. Vegetarianism, Wagner, History, dogs. I’m praying it’s not a two-movie evening.’
Clara glimpsed her escape in the adjacent room, where a vast marble table was piled with diverse objects, like a grand church jumble sale.
‘Are those the Führer’s birthday gifts?’
‘Haven’t you seen them yet? You should. You wouldn’t believe some of the junk the poor man has been given. In my opinion most of it should go straight to the Winterhilfswerk.’
Magda was right. The display was exactly like something one might find at a wedding, only far larger and more vulgar. Instead of wine glasses, fish knives and toasters, the Führer’s beloved nation had produced an extravagant and frankly kitsch selection of gifts. A bust of Goethe rubbed shoulders with an ivory hunting horn. Dull landscapes were propped against oils of ancient military figures. A garish gold model of the Führer’s art gallery in Munich, the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, jostled for the bad taste prize with a handcrafted castle studded with precious stones. One citizen with a vivid imagination had supplied a pair of baby bootees and a knitted bonnet, which had been deftly concealed behind a vase of striking ugliness containing a yellowed skeleton of dried flowers.
Clara stared at the gifts without seeing them, focusing on what the next hour would bring. She wanted to choreograph her movements precisely, minute by minute. She saw herself as if from above, unstoppable, like a character in a film, except that there was no rehearsal that could prepare her for an attempt like this. No prompt to help her. No possibility of a retake. This task had to be carried out perfectly, and she had only one chance.
‘Aren’t they wonderful? The people love their Führer very much.’
The speaker was a young woman in her twenties with frizzy, dark hair and a deferential expression. Compared to the Nazi wives, her clothes were dowdy and her manner restrained. She extended a polite hand.
‘I’m Christa Schroeder, the Führer’s secretary.’
‘Clara
Vine.’
‘Yes. I mean, I recognize you, Fräulein Vine. I know who you are. I was admiring your dress. Is it French?’
It was a mistake to wear Parisian fashion in Hitler’s presence. Not only did he hate the French, but he believed the slender Gallic silhouette was the last thing likely to encourage the fecundity he wanted for his Reich.
‘It was a gift,’ she replied noncommittally.
‘Such a lovely one. And look at all the Führer’s gifts! We’ve been working round the clock to catalogue them. People have been so generous. He’s had a Titian portrait, and the most marvellous Meissen porcelain and a sailing ship made entirely from flowers. Captain Bauer, his pilot, gave him a model Condor aeroplane. Just over there. And Herr Porsche gave him a model car as well as a real one.’ A little confidential smile. ‘To tell the truth, it’s the models the Führer loves best. He’s like a kid with them.’
The secretary sighed fondly. ‘But the birthday was so tiring for our poor chief. All those receptions went on for days . . . I’m sorry, Fräulein, are you cold in here?’
‘No.’ Clara rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. ‘I’m fine.’
‘It’s nerves, isn’t it?’
‘Nerves?’
‘Please forgive me saying, but it’s quite normal. That’s how everyone is when they meet the Führer. If only they knew how important the film evenings are to him. He loves being with people, and being entertained. He used to adore going to operettas and variety shows at the Wintergarten or the Admiralspalast but he can’t go any more because his presence disrupts the performance. So he sends his steward instead and the man brings a programme back for the chief to look at. But that’s no substitute. It’s sad really. This is the nearest he gets to an evening of pleasure.’
Suddenly, from the room behind them, the click of heels rang out like pistol shots, followed by a volley of Heil Hitlers, and a large dog, fur plush and shiny and claws skittering on the marble floor, padded into the Music Room. As it stood with its long, pink tongue hanging out, absorbing the gazes of the guests, it was as if, for a freakish moment, the dog itself was the object of their adulation. Then, a heartbeat later, its master arrived.
When Hitler entered, it was as though all the air had been emptied out of the room and replaced with something sharper and more electric. Every eye was drawn to him as if on a wire, every expression one of bright, jewel-like intensity. Here was the face that had launched a thousand placards, that hung in every shop window, and featured on almost every stamp. The face that appeared to some women in their dreams and others in their nightmares.
Hitler’s eyes were very dark blue. His hair had a stark side parting and one lock, like a scribble of charcoal, sliced diagonally across his brow. He was wearing a plain grey suit, and under it a white shirt and spotted tie. His expression, which generally looked long-suffering and aggrieved, as though he was enduring some intolerable injustice, was now relaxed and he was smiling broadly. After all, aside from military manoeuvres, movies were his favourite thing.
Several rows of red plush seats had been arranged in front of the screen, much like the gilt chairs Clara had shunned in the VIP enclosure at the birthday parade, and as soon as Hitler arrived, there was an undignified jostling for position, as if the whole company were engaged in a party game of musical chairs, and if they didn’t hurry they might find themselves with nowhere to sit. Clara looked around in confusion. She had not anticipated this. For a second, as the seats filled up, she hoped she might be reprieved – perhaps she would find nowhere to sit, and like a child at a party, be forced to leave the game – until Christa Schroeder came to her aid. She had taken two seats in the row directly behind the Führer.
‘Won’t you sit with me, Fräulein?’
The chairs were arranged so that viewers could see between the heads of the people in front. Clara’s chair was behind and to the right of Hitler, out of his peripheral vision and close enough to see the bull neck with the beginnings of a roll of fat above the collar and the comb marks in his oiled hair, tightly shaven at the back and sides. Everything appeared to her in extraordinary clarity, as through binoculars. She saw the patch of stubble on the pallid skin that the razor had missed, and the place where a boil was forming on one side of his neck. She heard the snuffle and grunt of the dog lying, head on paws, at its master’s feet.
She let her hand drop to her thigh and felt again the apprehension she remembered as a child during a sermon at church, worrying that she might lose all power of inhibition and shout Major Grand’s words out loud.
I hope if you were ever in the same room as him, you would have no qualms.
Now she was in the same room as him. She was sitting no more than two feet behind him. She could even detect the edge of his famous halitosis, mingled with Kölnisch Wasser, his favourite scent, and see him chewing a fingernail. She removed her jacket and laid it over her lap and then she let her hand cover the shape of the Derringer beneath her dress. Its warm steel burned against her thigh. She practised the movement in her imagination. Her previous nerves vanished and she felt strangely calm.
As the lights dimmed Hitler fished out the pair of gold spectacles that he hated people to see him wearing, and Christa Schroeder leant back with a sigh. This must surely be the most pleasurable part of her job.
It would be best to wait until after the newsreel.
It’s always the same routine. Cartoon first, then a newsreel, then the movie.
It made sense to act when the audience were deeply engaged and all attention was immersed in the action on screen. How long would the cartoon last? Ten minutes perhaps? Ufa Tonwoche newsreels were longer – typically up to twenty minutes. That meant half an hour, at the outside, before the main feature and then another ten minutes until the opening credits had rolled and the story properly begun. Forty minutes then. Clara couldn’t stop herself glancing at the Leibstandarte, the ones who would shortly arrest her, standing impassively at the door. Then at the shadowy form of Conrad Adler, to her left on the end of the first row, sandwiched between Goebbels and the pretty Frau von Schirach. Adler did not glance back, but the fixity of his posture told her that he was well aware of her. She felt intensely alert, her head throbbing with tension. Everyone flinched as the projector issued a high-pitched squeal and then, with a splash of frenzied Technicolor, Mickey Mouse in Society Dog Show burst onto the screen.
The softness and warmth of the cartoon shapes could not be more out of place in the Reich Chancellery’s marble tomb. As Mickey’s falsetto, dubbed into German, chattered brightly through the action, Clara tried to keep her eyes rigidly ahead. Everything about the cartoon’s vibrant jollity and rubbery invincibility was dramatically at odds with the chill formality of the assembled audience. The dog-loving Hitler gave himself up to loud, delighted laughter, but the reaction of the others was less fulsome. Robert Ley yawned. Goebbels wore a little sneering grin and his wife a stony glare. Rudolf Hess’s face was a study in blank incomprehension.
The cartoon lasted nine minutes. Slightly shorter than her estimate. It was followed seamlessly by the trumpet fanfare and black and white spinning globe of the newsreel. The Ufa Tonwoche would contain, by Clara’s reckoning, at least five items. It was narrated in the usual tone of high-pitched, hectoring excitability – both pessimism and reflection were frowned on in news reports – and began with footage of military exercises taking place near the Polish border. Row on row of marching men and tanks were followed by a camera panning towards a stack of newspapers pegged to a kiosk. ‘Warsaw Threatens Bombardment of Danzig’, ‘Three German Passenger Planes Shot at by Poles’, ‘German Families Flee Polish Monsters’, ‘Why is Germany Waiting?’ The customary crowd appeared, cheering and saluting. A country coaxing itself into a frenzy of adrenaline.
The next item was about the Ahnenerbe. A group of men in civilian dress were seen loading equipment into large trunks and the screen filled with a map of the world, marked by arrows pointing towards South America. Following the Ahnenerbe
’s success in Tibet, another, even more expensive jaunt was underway to Bolivia, on the assumption that Nordic colonists had sailed there a million years earlier. The face of Doktor Kraus loomed on screen, explaining that through a series of expeditions, explorers would probe every corner of the earth to uncover music, folk tales, even paintings, that testified to the ancient preeminence of the German race. Hitler removed his glasses and took out a handkerchief to clean them. Others shifted in their seats. The adventures of the Ahnenerbe might have captured Himmler’s imagination, but nobody else was quite so enthralled.
Eight minutes into the newsreel. Clara’s hand beneath her jacket edged up the side of her dress with her fingers, eased the Derringer from its holster and slipped it into her palm. It was small enough to remain entirely hidden beneath her hand. When you want to use it you move the hammer back to full cock position and pull the trigger. If you misfire, you can pull the hammer back and try again. But there’s only the chance for two shots. You can only make one mistake.
Another twelve minutes to go.
The compilers of the newsreel always liked to mix in trivial items with the heavy news. It was a journalistic technique, Clara knew, called ‘light and shade’. The next item concerned a Hitler Youth marching band in Bremen that had won a national competition. The players were all gleaming tubas and knobbly white knees, toting their instruments like rifles, notes clashing like swords in the air. The youngest were still in the Pimpf and could not have been more than ten years old. At the sight of the smooth, clean faces, shining with ardent pride, Hitler replaced his glasses and peered closely. Clara thought of Erich and wondered what he would say to see her here, so close to his beloved Führer, and what he would think of her tomorrow. If he would ever forgive her.
